Anne Arundel County's free River Days festival series is heading into its final stretch, with two more Saturday events planned before summer winds down — one this weekend at Annapolis Maritime Museum Park and another two weeks later at Fort Smallwood Park. Both stops promise free boat rides, water activities, live music, games, crafts, food trucks, and environmental programs, running from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., according to the seed facts behind the 2026 schedule.
The next festival lands at Annapolis Maritime Museum Park, located at 7300 Edgewood Road in Annapolis, on August 29, with the series wrapping up at Fort Smallwood Park at 9500 Fort Smallwood Road in Pasadena on September 12. As Eye On Annapolis reports, the Anne Arundel County Executive's Office is hosting the full 2026 series, which County Executive Steuart Pittman says gives families a chance to get out on the water and appreciate where they live. The events are also meant to encourage residents to protect the health of local waterways.
Boat ride tickets are handed out on a first-come, first-served basis, with distribution beginning one hour before each scheduled departure, since space aboard the vessels is limited. That on-site system marks a shift from the festival series' earliest days: the inaugural 2023 season used an advance online registration process, but organizers moved to same-day ticketing to manage crowd capacity and cut down on registration no-shows, according to PropTalk. The county says a full schedule of boat ride times and ticket pickup windows will be posted ahead of each event, and questions can be directed to the River Days website or the listed contact email.
A County With Miles of Shoreline but Little Public Access
The festival series traces back to August 2023, when Pittman launched River Days as a public policy response to a long-standing imbalance: Anne Arundel County has more than 530 miles of tidal shoreline along the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, but historically only about one mile of that shoreline was set aside for public swimming access, per Anne Arundel County Government. Most of the county's waterfront land is privately held or restricted to private community associations, and Pittman established the festival series after community advocates pushed for greater public access to local waterfronts.
The program has grown and settled since then. It began with three inaugural festivals in 2023, expanded to five events in the summer of 2024, and has now stabilized into a four-event regional schedule for 2026, according to Anne Arundel County Government. This year's calendar kicked off at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater on May 2 and continued at Quiet Waters Park in Annapolis on July 11, with locations rotating among different regional watersheds so communities across the county get direct river access at some point in the season.
Free Boat Rides Depend on Local Maritime Partners
The free boat rides that anchor each festival are made possible through partnerships with local charter and non-profit operators. Watermark Charters runs its Miss Anne vessels at the events, while the Annapolis Maritime Museum offers cruises aboard its historic skipjack Wilma Lee, according to Anne Arundel County Government. Educational programming and hands-on environmental activities are hosted alongside those cruises in partnership with the Arlington Echo Outdoor Education Center and the Anne Arundel County Watershed Stewards Academy, which conducts watershed protection activities and water science demonstrations at the festivals.
Part of a Larger Push for Water Access
River Days is the visible, family-facing piece of a much larger county investment in public water infrastructure. Anne Arundel County allocated $7.8 million in capital funding for public water access site improvements, covering structural upgrades to county parks, public piers, and boat launch sites, per Anne Arundel County Government. Outside of the seasonal festivals, the county's Department of Recreation and Parks maintains two public boat ramps, 18 car-top launch sites for kayaks and paddleboards, three public beaches, and two indoor swimming pools year-round.
That infrastructure has faced real strain. After the private closure of the Discovery Village boat ramp in Shady Side in July 2025, the county stepped in to partner with Parish Creek Landing Marina to preserve free public boat ramp access for South County residents. Boat ramp availability in that part of the county remains a point of concern for recreational boaters and commercial watermen alike, reflecting the broader competition for limited waterfront space among private landowners, watermen, and the public that River Days was designed to help address.
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